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 Photo:
Michael Matthews beats Michal Kwiatkowski to the line. (Tim de
Waele/TDWSport.com).
Michael Matthews won the opening stage at the
Pais Vasco from a small group sprint on the streets of Bilbao.
The Australian sprinter made it through the hilly stage with a front group of roughly 50 riders to take the sprint ahead of world champion Michal Kwiatkowski and Ilnur Zakarin. April
6, 2015 (cyclingnews.com)
 Photo:
Bauke Mollema closed in on Nairo Quintana's lead (Tim de
Waele/TDWSport.com).
"The
Ardennes Classics are right around the corner! They are my next big
targets, after Tirreno-Adriatico, and I’m looking forward to taking on
the three days of racing at the Amstel Gold Race, Flèche Wallonne and
Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
I’m feeling good about my form after finishing well in Tirreno-Adriatico. It was seven days of racing at the WorldTour level and I think that it went really well. Nairo Quintana was strong on the uphill finish of the fifth stage in Terminillo but I finished second and I think that’s a good result for being so early in the season. I don’t think I’ve ever been in better shape in March, so that was good and I was happy with that." April
6, 2015 (cyclingnews.com)
 Photo:
"The favorites didn’t go full gas on the final category two climb, but
he came to the fore, which, at least for the moment, bodes well for the
upcoming harder stages."
Tinkoff-Saxo
and the rest of the pack in Vuelta al País Vasco were thrown right into
the mix with an undulating stage typical for the terrain of the Basque
Country. Four Tinkoff-Saxo riders, including Rafal Majka, crossed
the finish line in Bilbao in the decimated main bunch, where Michael Matthews
took first place in the sprint.
Tinkoff-Saxo’s sports director Sean Yates notes after the race that Majka’s presence at the front was an uplifting sign after the talented climber had suffered from sickness during the recent Volta a Catalunya. April
6, 2015 (cyclingquotes.com)
 Photo:
One of the most consistent riders in the women’s peloton.
There
was one top rider at the women’s Tour of Flanders yesterday who was
just happy to start, despite eventually finishing way below her
potential.
Swedish Champion Emma Johansson finished the race in 13th place, 3-30 behind winner Elisa Longo-Borghini, though only three weeks after breaking her collarbone. April
6, 2015 (cyclingweekly.co.uk)
2014-15
Races &
Results.
Vuelta Ciclista al Pais Vasco - Apr 6-11 (Stages & Results), Scheldeprijs - Apr 8 (History), Paris-Roubaix - Apr 12 (History), Giro d'Italia 2015 - May 9-31 (Stages), Tour de France 2015 - July 4-26 (Stages), Vuelta a España 2015 - Aug 22-Sept 13 (Stages), UCI Road World Championship 2015 - Sept 20-27 (Stages), Tour of Flanders - Apr 5 (Results), GP Miguel Indurain - Apr 4 (Results), Driedaagse De Panne-Koksijde - Mar 31-Apr 2 (Results), Gent - Wevelgem - Mar 29 (Results), Volta Ciclista a Catalunya - Mar 23-29 (Results), E3 Harelbeke - Mar 27 (Results), Milan San Remo - Mar 22 (Results), Tirreno-Adriatico - Mar 11-17 (Results), UCI Track World Championships - Feb 18-22 (Results), UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships - Jan 31-Feb 1 (Results).  Photo:
Stage 2 Profile.
Tuesday's Tour of
the Basque Country Stage 2 departs Bilbao at 12:45pm CET (6:45am U.S.
Eastern) and is expected at the finish at Vitoria-Gasteiz at around
5:13pm CET (11:13am U.S. Eastern).
Tour of the Basque Country live streaming video should get underway at around *3:30pm CET (*9:30am U.S. Eastern, 6:30am Pacific). *Eurosport is scheduled to begin at this time. April
6, 2015 (cyclingfans.com)
 Photo:
2015 Paris-Roubaix Profile and Cobblestone Sectors.
Sunday's
Paris-Roubaix departs Compiegne at 10:20am CET (4:20am U.S. Eastern)
and is expected at the finish at Roubaix at around 4:50pm CET (10:50am
U.S. Eastern).
Paris-Roubaix live streaming video should get underway at around *12:45pm CET (*6:45am U.S. Eastern, 3:45am Pacific). *Eurosport's coverage is scheduled to begin at this time. April
6, 2015 (cyclingfans.com)
 Photo:
Tubulars this wide were once reserved for Paris-Roubaix. Today they are
commonplace.
Years
ago pros would have scoffed at it, but low gears were the norm at the
2015 Tour de Flanders, with most bikes using 11-28t cassettes and
Bora-Argon 18 opting for the huge 11-32t range at the back.
Similarly, tubular widths once reserved only for Paris-Roubaix came out in spades, with 26, 27 and 28mm carcasses in widespread use. Held in Belgium from Bruge to Oudenaarde, the Tour of Flanders tackles 19 short but steep climbs, many of them paved with rough cobbles. April
6, 2015 (bikeradar.com)
 Photo:
Alexander Kristoff (Katusha)
(Bettini).
Alexander Kristoff took
a convincing sprint finish to win the 2015 Tour of Flanders ahead of
breakaway companion Niki
Terpstra while Greg
Van Avermaet led home the remnants of the chasers and was
forced to settle for third.
Kristoff and Terpstra jumped clear after the ascent of the Kruisberg, with the Dutch rider first to open up a gap on the rest of the race favorites. Despite never holding more than a thirty second lead and a late counter attack from Van Avermaet and Peter Sagan, the leading duo survived until the finish. Coming into the final kilometer Terpstra sat back and forced Kristoff to the front but the 2014 Milan-San Remo winner held his nerve and comprehensively took the sprint to secure the second Monument of his career. April
5, 2015 (cyclingnews.com)
|  Alexander
Kristoff capped "maybe the best week in my career" with a Tour of
Flanders win Sunday. Photo: Tim De Waele.
In
Norway on Sunday evening, in the first hours after Alexander Kristoff
won Belgium’s Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders), the locals
already crowned their next king of cycling.
Kristoff had just won his second monument after winning last year’s edition of Milano-Sanremo in a sprint ahead of Swiss Fabian Cancellara and Brit Ben Swift, which was followed by two stage wins at the Tour de France last summer. This surely would merit a crown Norwegians believed. His win did merit such accolades, but the 27-year-old’s career is still in its early phases and must be compared to the country’s other big cycling star, Thor Hushovd. Hushovd, who retired at the end of 2014, won the 2010 road world championship, the 2006 Gent-Wevelgem, and 10 individual Tour de France stages. April
6, 2015 (velonews.com)
 Again,
Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) did not figure into the finale, this time at
Ronde van Vlaanderen. He was dropped in the final kilometer by a
hard-charging Greg Van Avermaet (BMC) who nearly bridged to the two
leaders. Photo: Tim De Waele.
For
the second week in a row, Peter
Sagan’s legs went missing in the late, decisive moments of
the race, but that was better than Sep
Vanmarcke, who was MIA in the final throes of a wild,
wide-open Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders).
In an eerie reprise of E3 Harelbeke, when he was popped out of the winning, four-man move within 5km of the finish, Sagan didn’t have the horsepower to help Greg Van Avermaet shut down the winning attack from Niki Terpstra and winner Alexander Kristoff. Van Avermaet dropped the stalling Sagan in the final 500m to round out the podium in third, but told Sporza on the finish line that if another, stronger rider had joined him in the chase, he believed he could have bridged across to the leading pair. April
6, 2015 (velonews.com)
 Photo:
Zdenek Stybar (Etixx-Quickstep) (Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com).
Zdenek Stybar once
again suffered from problems with his temporary front teeth, this time
in the Tour of Flanders. The Czech rider had similar issues before
Strade Bianche, but had a quick fix the day before seizing the victory
in Siena.
On Sunday, the bridge was rattled loose on the cobbles of Flanders, and he was unsure of how much his gap-toothed grill affected his race. Stybar was one of the pre-race favorites, sharing the team leadership with Niki Terpstra who set up the decisive breakaway move with eventual winner Alexander Kristoff. Stybar covered the reactions in the chase group, struggled on the final climb and eventually finished ninth. April
6, 2015 (cyclingnews.com)
 Photo:
The course has been up for rather intense debate since radical changes
in 2012. What do we say now?
"Every
year since 2012 we have reached this point in the season, as surely as
the race itself has arrived, and gone: the point where we debate
whether the Ronde van Vlaanderen needs to change the course.
With some rumors afloat I thought this year it was time for something of a thorough review, followed by you guys weighing in. I'm not going to make my own pronouncements. It's time for the people to speak." April
6, 2015 (podiumcafe.com)
 Photo:
Etixx-Quick Step mechanics got crafty with Di2 wiring at the Tour of
Flanders (Ben Delaney / Immediate Media).
With
Shimano Di2 electric shifting, you can shift wherever you can put a
button. Stock, satellite options, however, have thus far been limited
to so-called sprint shifters with a short wire length, and the climber
switch, which Shimano designed to be operated with the thumb.
At the Tour of Flanders, Etixx-Quick Step riders rolled out with four different satellite configurations — plus the standard lever shifters, of course — thanks to some ingenuity from team mechanics. April
6, 2015 (cyclingnews.com)
 Photo:
Connie Carpenter-Phinney, first woman to win an Olympic medal in
cycling, joined us for the ride to the famous Luckenbach.
"'Welcome
to Texas, y’all,' one of the flight attendants drawls as the plane
touches Austin ground. It’s just past 4 p.m. and I started my travels
10 hours and two time zones ago, at 4 a.m. Seattle time. The last three
hours were spent trying to block out the crying twin toddlers behind
me, and I’m so excited to be done flying for the day.
Inside the airport, live music and a shuttle await me. Just one final leg to go: a two-hour shuttle ride to Fredericksburg in Texas Hill Country. Cowboys. Stars. Steak. Longhorns. Lance. Bush. Botched CX Nationals. — I’ll admit that I didn’t know much about Texas and certainly not a lot of positive things. But when Rapha asked me to come along to Texas Hill Country to ride bikes with their ambassadors, it was easy to say yes. I had never been to Texas and always enjoy new places and new people to ride with. As it turns out, Texas Hill Country is absolutely lovely, and well worth a visit for riding, sight-seeing, vacationing or a spring training camp." April
6, 2015 (cyclingtips.com.au)
 Photo:
Contribution levels start at $199, which buys a first edition of the
saddle, which will eventually retail for $300-$400.
California-based
leather saddle company Selle Anatomica is working with UC San Diego to
develop a carbon fiber road saddle that mimics the comfort of its
leather saddles at considerably less weight. Selle Anatomic is trying
to raise $30,000 through crowd funding to get the saddle into
production.
The saddle would have a carbon fiber top attached to a carbon leaf spring, which in turn is attached to a titanium rail for use with standard seatposts. The design is projected to weigh under 200 grams, which is 300 grams lighter than Selle Anatomica’s comparable leather saddles. April
6, 2015 (bicycleretailer.com)
What
do give you a billionaire for his birthday? Katusha team owner Igor Makarov has
private jets, two luxury yachts and all the trappings you’d expect of a
Russian oligarch.
Fortunately there are things money can’t buy no matter how many Roubles you might have. Niki Terpstra tried to spoil things up the Paterberg, forcing the pace on the vicious 20% slope but there’s no cracking Kristoff and the sprint finish in Oudenaarde was a formality for Kristoff. April
5, 2015 (inrng.com)
|  Photo:
It had not been a good month for Armstrong.
"Recently
the oncologist Larry
Einhorn sent a letter to each of the hundreds of patients
who had once been in his care.
As "a personal favor," he asked, would we be willing to return to Indianapolis for a follow-up exam? In an act that nicely capped his life’s work, he wanted to collect information about the long-term consequences of a brutal but effective chemotherapy regimen he had long ago devised. If you received one of these letters, you had likely once been a young man unaccountably struck with testicular cancer. I was one of those patients. And Lance Armstrong was another." April
6,
2015 (si.com)
April
6,
2015
 Photo:
BMC’s chief medical officer Dr. Max Testa said the normal recovery time
from an injury of this type is several months. (Tim De Waele,
TDWsport.com (File)).
BMC’s
Peter Stetina
broke his right tibia, patella, and four ribs in a crash near the
finish line of Monday’s opening stage of Vuelta al Pais Vasco.
His teammate, Darwin Atapuma, was also among the half-dozen or so riders who were involved in the pile-up about 400 meters from the finish line of the 162.7km race. The crash happened when the middle part of a reduced peloton was passing three-foot-high metal poles topped with orange traffic cones near the curb lane of the finishing straight. “Some guys barely missed the poles and some clipped them,” Stetina said. “I didn’t even have time to react or pull the brakes. You don’t expect to have fixed obstacles in the middle of a field sprint.” April
6, 2015 (velonews.com)
 Photo:
Alexander Kristoff escape in the 2015 Tour of Flanders.
Yesterday’s
Tour of Flanders was the fourth edition of the race in its new look,
Muur van Geraardsbergen less format, and we are still learning
new things every year about how the race is best ridden.
The consensus seems to be that this is a more attritional Tour of Flanders than it is tactical, and therefore the best approach is to conserve energy for much of the race before making your move on the final ascents of the Oude Kwaremont and Paterberg, respectively the penultimate and last climbs of the race. April
6, 2015 (cyclingweekly.co.uk)
 Photo:
Luca Guercilena manager of the Trek Factory Racing team (Photopress.be).
The
Tour of Flanders will be remembered for Alexander Kristoff’s
victory and a great day of racing but also for the accidents that saw
two nasty accidents involving Shimano neutral service vehicles.
Jesse Sergent and Sébastien Chavanel were both taken down by a neutral service car, in two separate incidents, within around 20 kilometers of each other. Both riders subsequently abandoned the race and while Chavanel escaped with some hefty bruising, an x-ray revealed that Sergent had broken his left collarbone. April
6, 2015 (cyclingnews.com)
 The
pressure has been on Etixx-Quick-Step's Zdenek Stybar and Niki Terpstra
to fill the big shoes left by Tom Boonen, but so far this spring, only
Stybar has delivered a major win, in Strade Bianche. Photo: Tim De
Waele.
The
cobbled classics season is drawing to a close, and Belgium’s biggest
team has little to cheer about. Etixx-Quick-Step has yet to find the
top step on the podium in this spring’s one-day WorldTour action. Niki Terpstra came
close twice, but settled for silver medals, one at Sunday’s Ronde van
Vlaanderen, the other at Gent-Wevelgem.
The 30-year-old Dutchman rode with Norwegian Alexander Kristoff in the final of yesterday’s Belgian monument. They covered three climbs and 28 kilometers together, but Etixx’s leader could not shake Kristoff. It could have been worse. Stijn Vandenbergh crashed twice, once hitting a tree and fracturing his nose. Etixx’s co-leader, Zdenek Stybar had to take out his false teeth and could not eat for the final 70 kilometers. Tom Boonen, the team’s star and Belgian’s cycling hero, could not even start. He crashed in the Paris-Nice stage race in March, dislocated his shoulder and required surgery. April
6, 2015 (velonews.com)
 The
2014 Tour of Utah Women's
Edition podium. From left: Mandy Heintz (Guru Cycles), Coryn Rivera
(UnitedHealthcare), and Meredith Miller (Pepper Palace). Photo by Chris
Case.
Organizers
of the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah have confirmed that 11 women’s
professional and domestic elite cycling teams have accepted invitations
to race at the Tour of Utah Women’s Edition: Criterium Classic on
August 3 and 4. The Criterium Classic is a part of the National
Criterium Calendar (NCC), sanctioned by USA Cycling.
“The Tour of Utah is very proud to provide a national spotlight for the best women’s cycling athletes again this year. The Women’s Edition: Criterium Classic is one of 17 events on the National Criterium Calendar, so it provides valuable points for the NCC standings,” said Alex Kim, race director for the Tour of Utah Women’s Edition. April
6, 2015 (velonews.com)
April
5,
2015
Jesse Sergent) was
forced to abandon Sunday’s Tour of Flanders after being hit by a
neutral service car. Sergent
was in the break along with six other riders when a Shimano neutral
service car swerved to avoid a curb as it was overtaking the group, and
sideswiped the New Zealand rider, who was thrown from his bike.
Sergent could be seen sitting in the back of a race ambulance following the incident supporting what looked like a broken collarbone as he was attended to by medics. The Trek Factory Racing team quickly confirmed that his race would end there. April
5, 2015 (cyclingnews.com)
April
5, 2015 (cyclingweekly.co.uk)
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